A musical ensemble, also known as a music group or musical group, is a group of people who perform instrumental and/or vocal music, with the ensemble typically known by a distinct name. Some music ensembles consist solely of instrumentalists, such as the jazz quartet or the orchestra. Other music ensembles consist solely of singers, such as choirs and doo wop groups. In both popular music and classical music, there are ensembles in which both instrumentalists and singers perform, such as the rock band or the Baroque chamber group for basso continuo and one or more singers. In classical music, trios or quartets either blend the sounds of musical instrument families or group together instruments from the same instrument family, such as string ensembles or wind ensembles. Some ensembles blend the sounds of a variety of instrument families, such as the orchestra, which uses a string section, brass instruments, woodwinds and percussion instruments, or the concert band, which uses brass, woodwinds and percussion.
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich is an American composer, the first female composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Her early works are marked by atonal exploration, but by the late 1980s, she had shifted to a postmodernist, neoromantic style. She has been called "one of America's most frequently played and genuinely popular living composers." She was a 1994 inductee into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame. Zwilich has served as the Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor at Florida State University.
Dianne Elizabeth Reeves is an American jazz singer.
Philip Wells Woods was an American jazz alto saxophonist, clarinetist, bandleader, and composer.
Tom Harrell is an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist, composer, and arranger. Voted Trumpeter of the Year of 2018 by Jazz Journalists Association, Harrell has won awards and grants throughout his career, including multiple Trumpeter of the Year awards from DownBeat magazine, SESAC Jazz Award, BMI Composers Award, and Prix Oscar du Jazz. He received a Grammy Award nomination for his big band album, Time's Mirror.
Melinda Jane Wagner is a US composer, and winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize in music. Her undergraduate degree is from Hamilton College. She received her graduates degrees from University of Chicago and University of Pennsylvania. She also served as Composer-in-Residence at the University of Texas (Austin) and at the 'Bravo!' Vail Valley Music Festival. Some of her teachers included Richard Wernick, George Crumb, Shulamit Ran, and Jay Reise.
The Monterey Jazz Festival is an annual music festival that takes place in Monterey, California, United States. It debuted on October 3, 1958, championed by Dave Brubeck and co-founded by jazz and popular music critic Ralph J. Gleason and jazz disc jockey Jimmy Lyons.
Shirley Valerie Horn was an American jazz singer and pianist. She collaborated with many jazz musicians including Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Toots Thielemans, Ron Carter, Carmen McRae, Wynton Marsalis and others. She was most noted for her ability to accompany herself with nearly incomparable independence and ability on the piano while singing, something described by arranger Johnny Mandel as "like having two heads", and for her rich, lush voice, a smoky contralto, which was described by noted producer and arranger Quincy Jones as "like clothing, as she seduces you with her voice".
The Celebration of the Arts festival (COTA), is an annual event in September located in Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania. COTA is presented in cooperation with the Borough of Delaware Water Gap, Castle Hill Development, Inc., and the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission.
Roger Greenberg is an American saxophonist and saxophone teacher.
Diana Haskell is a multi-faceted clarinetist who works as an orchestral clarinetist, educator, clinician and chamber musician. Haskell is currently Associate Principal Clarinet with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. In her role as Associate Principal Clarinet, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has described her artistry as "perfectly played...with hymn-like beauty". Since 2003 Ms. Haskell has also performed numerous times with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra as soloist, including with Maestro David Robertson and Maestro Jahja Ling.
Tia Fuller is an American saxophonist, composer, and educator, and a member of the all-female band touring with Beyoncé. Fuller is currently a faculty member in the ensembles department at Berklee College of Music. Fuller was a Featured Jazz Musician in Pixar's full length computer-animated feature Soul. For the film Fuller plays an alto saxophone with a Vandoren mouthpiece for the character Dorothea Williams. The appearance of Dorothea Williams is influenced by Fuller, and the character's speaking lines are voiced by Angela Bassett.
Charles Davis was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Davis played alto, tenor and baritone saxophone, and performed extensively with Archie Shepp and Sun Ra.
The American Music Program is a youth jazz band in Portland, Oregon founded by jazz trumpeter, composer, and educator Thara Memory. This non-profit youth music program mentors primary school students from 7th-12th grade. On May 9, 2015, the group won Jazz at Lincoln Center's Essentially Ellington Competition, playing Ellington's Tattooed Bride from memory.
Victoria Ellen Bond is an American conductor and composer in New York City.
Valerie Coleman is an American composer and flutist as well as the creator of the wind quintet Imani Winds. Coleman is a distinguished artist of the century who was named Performance Today's 2020 Classical Woman of the year and was listed as “one of the Top 35 Women Composers” in the Washington Post. In 2019, Coleman's orchestral work, Umoja, Anthem for Unity, was commissioned and premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra. Coleman's Umoja is the first classical work by a living African American woman that the Philadelphia Orchestra has performed.
David "Chase" Baird is an American saxophonist and composer.
The New York Summer Music Festival (NYSMF) was a summer program for young musicians held at SUNY Oneonta that operated from 2006 to 2015. The camp offered workshops with accomplished musicians and attendees performed in dozens of free public concerts during each of the program's two-week sessions. At the end of its 2015 season, the program's Executive Director, Jungeun Kim, announced the NYSMF board's decision not to reopen the camp in 2016.
Jeremy Pelt is an American jazz trumpeter.
Sharel Cassity is an American saxophonist, composer, and educator based in Chicago, having lived in New York City from 2000 to 2016. She is a winner of the ASCAP Young Jazz Composer, is in the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame, has performed internationally in 27 countries, and is faculty at DePaul University, Columbia College Chicago, and Elgin Community College in Illinois teaching Jazz Pedagogy, classical saxophone jazz saxophone, classical flute, and piano. In addition to recording several albums, she has toured with her band internationally and has been featured with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra 2020.
